


when the devil drives

by EllisLuie



Series: love is loud(er) [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Hurt Klaus Hargreeves, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Dub-con, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus comes with his own tags, Needles, Pre-Season/Series 01, Protective Ben Hargreeves, Self-Harm, Self-Mutilation, Swearing, alternating pov, but so are our boys, these tags are mess, you can't convince me Klaus doesn't swear like a sailor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:14:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24976669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllisLuie/pseuds/EllisLuie
Summary: The drugs should have stopped them. They shouldn’t be there, in front of him, details slowly emerging in the blue forms, voices angry and cruel and loud.Ben wasn’t there and Klaus’s muscles were jelly and there was no one around but the dead, pressing him into the cold stone and the drugs weren’t working, why weren’t they working?.Klaus has relied on the one thing that makes the ghosts stop since he was a teenager. Sometimes he thinks the drugs are the only thing that’s kept him sane. So what does he do now that his only coping mechanism no longer works?
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: love is loud(er) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807864
Comments: 31
Kudos: 326





	1. Chapter 1

Ben’s weary, disappointed face was a familiar sight to Klaus.

The blur of muted greys and browns solidifying into a dark alleyway around him was, unfortunately, just as familiar. Klaus blinked away the last of the haze clinging to his brain, and writhed for a minute on the ground before he could heave himself upright. He leaned heavily against the bricks behind him, and frowned at the painful twinge in his chest.

“How long?” he rasped, throat spasming in protest. Ben frowned at him, but he looked more tired than angry, so Klaus was counting it as a win.

“Forty minutes. I thought I was going to have to watch your scrawny ass actually die.”

Ah, so Ben  _ was  _ angry. Good to know.

This wasn’t a new exchange between the two of them, and they both knew it wouldn’t be the last, as much as Ben nagged. Frankly, Klaus was just counting it a small miracle that no good samaritan had stumbled across his strung out body while he was high out of his mind and decided to call an ambulance. That was always a bitch, and if it wasn’t a paramedic that had treated Klaus before, they always insisted on taking him all the way to the hospital. Even Ben hated that, and usually helped Klaus houdini out of there before the doctor managed to get a name or emergency contact from him. 

“Don’t get your ghostie panties in a twist,” Klaus said, waving his hand in Ben’s direction. “What time is it, anyway? You think Jim’s out?”

“ _ Klaus _ ,” Ben said incredulously. “You literally just avoided an overdose, I’m pretty sure you’re still high. Call it a night, man.”

Using the wall to leverage himself to his feet, Klaus did his best to give his brother a withering look. The world had decided to tilt, though, so he might have missed. Finding it difficult to talk around the steel clamp in his chest, he jerked his head towards the mouth of the alley pointedly. Ben grimaced at the indistinct forms crowded there, voices just muted enough they couldn’t make out the words. 

Klaus did his best to avoid them as he stumbled out of the alley, trying to shake the feeling back into his arms. Ben trailed behind him, side-stepping the other ghosts when they reached out towards Klaus with more grace than Klaus thought was fair. 

“You have enough cash for a motel,” Ben said helpfully. “If we find a newer one, there might be less ghosts. If we budget it right, you could even get some food. It’ll be daylight in a few hours, we could find somewhere with waffles.”

Klaus stopped in his tracks and whirled on Ben, who obligingly stopped and regarded him impassively. “Stop,” Klaus ordered, jabbing a finger in his brother’s face. Predictably, Ben was unamused. “Stop being nice to me, damn it. I know what you’re doing with your… reverse psychology bullshit. You usually bitch more at me. I don’t need you to coddle me, fuck, Ben.”

Something softened in Ben’s expression, and that just infuriated Klaus more. He threw up his hands in disgust and stomped further down the street, steadfastly ignoring the whispering voices that were amassing behind him. 

“You know it won’t work,” Ben said quietly. Klaus flipped him off. “You’re just going to overdose, and they’ll still be here. You haven’t been able to make them go away completely in weeks. Just - find a bed tonight, okay? They’re not too bad right now, we can wait out the night, at least.”

Considering there was an old lady with a gaping neck wound currently shouting at them, Klaus rather disagreed. Ben must have seen the stubborn set of his jaw, because he sighed in defeat, the disappointment less cutting than he probably hoped. 

“Fine,” Ben said tightly. “But not Jim. He’s a dick, and I don’t trust him. You’re the one that taught me to avoid dealers like him, remember? Find someone else. What’s her name - Mina sets up near here, go to her.”

“Think I need a little more than weed, Benny,” Klaus muttered, flinching at the vehement screech ol’ grandma gave behind them. 

Ben made his obligatory noise of disapproval, but Klaus had had six years of practice ignoring that very noise, and it didn’t even slow him down. 

Jim was indeed out and about, though with sunrise only an hour away, he was almost dry and about to head back to whatever crackhouse he called home. He raised an eyebrow when he saw Klaus coming, looking him up and down and coming to his own conclusions, hand already in his pocket. 

Klaus usually didn’t like dealing with Jim, Ben was right about that - something about the sleazy aura of the guy made Klaus’s stomach turn, which was quite the accomplishment considering his lifestyle. He was also wary of the, uh,  _ goods  _ Jim provided, having heard cautionary tales from the occasional kind or pitying fellow junkie. Klaus had gotten several helpful tips back when he first got on the streets, still a baby-faced fifteen year old too naive to be trusted to buy his own drugs, and he tried to live by those tips as well he could; living on the streets wasn’t exactly a cakewalk, and he figured there was no need to make it any harder. When Ben started haunting his every step (literally,  _ ha _ ), Klaus had reluctantly shared those tips, if only so that when Klaus was inevitably too off his face to remember his own name ( _ it was Four, that was easy to remember, one, two, three, four -  _ ) Ben could steer him right.

If the asshole was going to hang around like a bad smell, might as well make himself useful, right?

But, well, Klaus was nothing if not stubborn. One of his most shining character traits, actually, at least he thought so. He knew that Jim would be his best bet for the night (morning?), with his usual dealers already done for the night and the others unlikely to sell to him (he had a bit of a reputation, so sue him). Jim’s prices were unpredictable, but Klaus had had a busy week and had a tidy sum in his pocket. Plus, if he was short, Jim was known to - accommodate. Ben wouldn’t be happy but then, he never was.

When Klaus turned away from Jim with lighter pockets and a small balloon cupped carefully in his hand, he wasn’t surprised to find Ben gone. He didn’t know where his ghostly brother disappeared to, but whenever Klaus was being particularly vexatious or  _ unsavoury  _ Ben tended to leave, just for a few hours. Klaus understood, of course he did - he’d spent his whole life knowing how frustrating his presence was, had been told over and over that he was too much, too loud,  _ just shut up for once Four _ . Hell, if Klaus could take a break from himself he would too.

He never told Ben about the bolt of fear that always hit him when he realized he was alone, the paranoia that told him this was it, this was the time Ben had truly had enough and was never coming back, was abandoning him just like the others, leaving him with the ghosts and  _ let me out Dad please let me out -  _

Ben was never gone for long. He said he couldn’t leave Klaus for longer than a few hours, in case he did something stupid and got himself in trouble. Klaus rather thought he was good at getting himself in (and out of) trouble even with Ben by his side, but kept that to himself. 

Ben didn’t like Jim, had specifically told Klaus not to go to him, and never liked to stick around to watch him shoot up. Klaus figured a few hours break was fair enough, and the sun was going to be out soon, so it wasn’t like he was going to be left in the dark; Ben had learned early on not to do that, regardless of how pissed he was. Klaus and the dark didn’t mix well, and his panic attacks were truly spectacular things. Sometimes Klaus still grimaced at the memory of Ben’s face the first time he’d witnessed one, the way he’d stumbled over his words like little Number Two and hadn’t bitched at him for days. Nice Ben was a strange and foreign creature in death, and Klaus much preferred the sarcastic, judgement-laden comments. 

Nonetheless, without Ben’s stoic presence by his side, Klaus was painfully aware of every movement of the still blurry ghosts around him. They were growing in number the longer he wandered the streets, crowding around him, pressing in close. He hunched his shoulders and tried to avoid looking directly at them, setting his jaw against the dozens of voices repeating  _ klausklausklaus  _ in his ear. He knew they would only get worse as time went on, and by the time he found a deep set doorway far enough away from main foot traffic, his hands were shaking so badly he fumbled with the balloon. 

Not exactly ideal conditions to handle a needle with, but Klaus had had plenty of practice. 

As the synthetic calm and pleasure spread through his bloodstream, Klaus slumped against the doorway, head lolling back. But the ghosts, inexplicably, shuffled closer and closer, their voices overlapping and getting louder and louder. The drugs didn’t let him feel the panic that should have electrified him, but Klaus started breathing in little pants, hands flying up to his ears. 

The drugs should have stopped them. They shouldn’t be there, in front of him, details slowly emerging in the blue forms, voices angry and cruel and  _ loud _ . The drugs should have stopped them, why didn’t it stop them, why were they still there?

Ben wasn’t there and Klaus’s muscles were jelly and there was no one around but the dead, pressing him into the cold stone and  _ the drugs weren’t working.  _

Klaus opened his mouth to scream, but the ghosts beat him to it.


	2. Chapter 2

Growing up, Ben and Klaus had shared an unspoken understanding, a mutual unease and fear of their powers. Their powers were external forces beyond their full control, pulling from planes of existence that had existed before them and would continue to exist long after. Unlike their siblings, Ben and Klaus were mere conduits for their powers, stretched thin between one world and the next.

Ben remembered long nights where Klaus would sneak into Ben’s room, before he replaced creature comforts with alcohol and drugs. They would curl up on Ben’s bed and Ben would shove his mouth right next to Klaus’s ear and tell him about whatever book he was reading, and Klaus would cling to him so tightly, trying to keep him in one piece. Those were fond memories. 

As a child, Ben often found himself the peacekeeper among his temperamental siblings. He was quiet and neutral and probably got along the best with all of them, if only because he was so unassuming. Ben sometimes thought, perhaps uncharitably, that his siblings had only liked him so much because he had been a blank canvas, reflecting their own thoughts and opinions - a mirror more than a brother. After his death, they remembered him in whatever fond way most complimented their own egos, and Ben loved them but it wasn’t _him_. 

Klaus thought death had turned him cynical and morbid, but privately Ben thought he’d always been that way, he’d just worked hard to bury it when he was alive. He’d been tentative and afraid, unwilling to provoke Reginald’s ire or risk his siblings turning on him with their own harsh words, the way he saw them turn on each other. Ben had always been a peacekeeper, but he hadn’t been the kind, quiet saint everyone seemed to remember.

Well, everyone except Klaus, anyway.

Even when they were kids, Klaus forced him to be more than a mirror. Part of it was that even though Klaus’s personality had always been so strong and colourful, he never let Ben fade into the background; but mostly Ben just never had to worry about _provoking_ Klaus, not like he did with the others. Klaus laughed at his dark humour, poked and prodded at him without fear of the Horror, and was so unapologetically _Klaus_ that Ben couldn’t help but follow suit. 

It changed when Klaus started drinking more, started disappearing at night and coming back with bloodshot eyes and unsteady steps. He stopped sneaking into Ben’s room, stopped holding Ben together. 

Ben hated the drugs for taking his brother away, hated the ghosts for making him vulnerable to vices in the first place, and hated Klaus for choosing those vices over ~~Ben~~ their family. 

Then Ben had died and had _become_ one of those ghosts, and suddenly he got a nauseating look into life with Klaus’s powers. Klaus had probably told Ben the most about his powers (except for maybe Five, who’d taken a scientific interest in them), but Ben quickly realized that he’d never truly _understood_. Maybe the living couldn’t understand, no matter what Klaus willingly shared; there was something fundamentally inexplicable about the ghosts, about the way they bled the colour and warmth from things, the way that they seemed to drain the life out of Ben’s brother. It was only in death that Ben really got it.

He didn’t like to think about what that meant for Klaus. Even when they were little, Klaus had always joked that he had one foot in the grave, halfway dead already. It wasn’t a comforting thought.

Ben had decided pretty early on that being dead _sucked_. Watching his own funeral had been an insightful and traumatizing experience, and watching the subsequent implosion of his family even more so. He missed talking to his siblings, missed being able to touch things, talk to people other than his addict brother.

Klaus was the bright spot in Ben’s afterlife, though. They’d had a rocky start, and Ben never wanted to see the encompassing fear and defeat in Klaus’s eyes aimed at him again, but they’d worked past it. Or, well, Ben had tried to shove it out of his mind as best he could, while Klaus refused to even acknowledge it and got spitefully high every time Ben alluded to it.

Ben hated when Klaus got high. He understood why he did it now, kind of, and having a lull in the ghosts around them _was_ a relief, but Ben knew it was only a matter of time before Klaus did irreversible damage, if he hadn’t already. Plus, Ben was kind of pissed, okay? Klaus could actually do things, talk to people with an ease Ben didn’t even have in life, could go out and Live with a capital ‘L’. Maybe go to school, get a job, a house. But there he was, day in, day out, drooling in alleys and selling himself to whatever shitstain was willing to pay.

So, yeah, Ben loved his brother and was so unbelievably grateful that they at least had each other, but sometimes he just needed a break. Needed to be away from Klaus and his bad decisions, needed time to be alone and just Ben instead of _KlausandBen_. Sometimes he sought out one of his other siblings, checking in on their lives. Usually he watched Vanya or Diego, since he didn’t like visiting the Academy, even now, and Luther refused to leave, and Allison was miles away living the high life in LA. 

Lately, he’d been watching Vanya more. Ben and Klaus - well, more Ben - had read her book during the latest stint in rehab, and Ben was curious about his sister. He wasn’t surprised, exactly, that she was full to the brim with resentment, and honestly, he understood. But he was surprised that she had been so willing to put all her insecurities and anger towards her siblings out in public like that, and he didn’t know whether to be more hurt or impressed. 

Regardless, watching her play violin for a few hours was always a nice change of pace. He used to do it when they were kids, too, sometimes with Klaus, sometimes not.

He made sure not to stay for too long, though. Vanya looked settled in to practice for several hours, the familiar determined wrinkle above her brow, but Ben had already been gone for almost two hours, and he was worried about Klaus. He was always even more of an idiot with heroin, and his self-preservation instinct had been lost years ago.

Ben found his brother huddled in a doorway a few blocks from where Jim had been, knees tucked to his chest and hands clamped tightly over his ears.

There was a dizzying amount of fully-formed ghosts swarming around him.

“Oh, shit,” Ben said. 

He ducked and shoved his way through the crowd, dropping to his knees beside his trembling brother. Klaus didn’t even twitch at his presence. 

“Fuck, Klaus, it’s okay, I’m here,” Ben said quickly, glaring at the ghosts who tried to shuffle closer. “You gotta get up, man. We gotta find somewhere else, somewhere quieter. How about the library? You can let me finish that Chekhov book, and you can flirt with that librarian again. Klaus? Klaus, can you - ”

Mistake, Ben thought. He’d gotten too close, and he knew better than to shout his brother’s name in his ear. Klaus jerked away from him, hitting his head against the brick wall with enough force to momentarily stun him. At least it got him to open his eyes and look at Ben, who immediately moved to take up more of Klaus’s line of sight.

“Hey, bro,” Ben said gently, trying to meet Klaus’s wildly rolling eyes. “I think it’s time to get out of here, yeah?”

Ben wasn’t sure how much Klaus could actually hear over the angry voices of the ghosts - he himself could barely hear himself think - but it seemed to work, since Klaus stopped trying to push himself into the wall. Ben winced at the red welts he spotted on Klaus’s upper arms, five on each side, just deep enough to draw blood.

“They didn’t go away,” Klaus said, eyes too wide, too glossy. “Ben, Benny, they didn’t stop, why didn’t it work? Why didn’t they go away? It’s so loud, I just want it to stop.”

Ben cursed again, looking his brother over critically. Klaus was pale, paler than normal, and he was shaking so bad Ben was surprised his teeth weren’t chattering. But he was at least mostly coherent, and hopefully he would be able to walk, presuming he could get himself on his feet to start with.

“Library,” Ben said firmly. “It’s a few blocks from here, and it’s early, so there won’t be many people. These assholes should disappear on the way.” God, Ben hoped that was true. Usually ghosts didn’t follow them for too long, easily distracted, but there was always the occasional stubborn one who liked to stick around. 

Klaus stared at him for a long moment, uncomprehending. Then he blinked, gave a deep, full-body shudder, and nodded jerkily. Ben hovered anxiously as Klaus scrabbled for a moment at the bricks, nails scraping, before he found his legs and pushed himself up. Klaus teetered for a second, cringing away from the ghost of a burly construction worker with a cracked skull, then steadied himself.

“Okay,” he said shakily. “Lead the way, mon frère!” He gave Ben a wide smile, lips stretched too wide, too many teeth, and pushed away from the wall. “Out of my way, shoo,” he grumbled, waving his hand through the ghosts. 

Ben trailed behind him, keeping a watchful eye on the ghosts, who wavered for a second, leaned towards Klaus for a few steps, then mercifully fell back. 

He didn’t bother trying to talk to Klaus as they found their way onto busier streets, heading in the vague direction of the library. Morning commuters gave them a wide berth, shooting nervous, distrustful looks at Klaus before crossing to the other side of the street.

“Hey, Ben,” Klaus said quietly somewhere between the locksmith and the deli. “I don’t think the drugs are keeping them away anymore.”

Ben’s first instinct was sarcasm, as it usually was with his brother. He was pretty sure Klaus was expecting it, too. But he couldn’t do it, not with Klaus hunched next to him, elbows tucked into his ribs, arms tight around himself. Sarcasm was becoming more of a chore lately, in times like this.

“I know,” he said instead. “I’m sorry.”

Klaus sighed and slumped like a puppet whose strings had been cut. 

The rest of the walk was in silence.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i haven't properly written anything in years, since high school, but tua has brought something back to life and i'm furiously writing every day because i have a lot of ideas i want to post before the new season, so

For as long as Klaus could remember, the ghosts had been loud.

When he was three years old, Reginald had finally caved and made a doctor come to the Academy to give Number Four a hearing test. There were no obvious signs of damage or deformation, the doctor said, but it was strange that Four only responded to some of the stimuli, with no apparent rhyme or reason. For a while, Reginald, and subsequently One through Three, believed Four was faking it. What else could explain the way he sometimes couldn’t hear Father’s orders unless One was screaming them in his face, while other times he giggled at a snide comment Five made under his breath? 

Then they discovered his powers, and it didn’t actually change anything, not really. Four tried to tell them it was the ghosts, always screaming, always crying, louder than his siblings except when they weren’t, but why would they believe him? While most of his childhood memories had been washed away by the haze of drugs (except for the cold and the dark and _please fourklausfour_ \- ), he always remembered the time he’d gone to Number Two and asked him to make the ghosts stop. 

“There’s no one there, Four,” Two had said in exasperation. “J-Just pay attention.”

The ghosts stayed loud, but Klaus slowly learned to tell living from dead, mostly. Generally, if the voice was loudloudloud and madmadmad, it was a ghost. Or his siblings fighting. Or Dad yelling at him. Or - 

Klaus wasn’t always good at telling them apart.

Distractions were key, he learned. Seven’s violin was nice, even when she was still learning and screeching, like nails on a chalkboard. Listening to Five explain the equations he wrote on the walls worked, too, though Four had to leave when he got frustrated and started yelling. The best, though, was listening to Six read out loud. 

None of it was really enough to drown out the ghosts, but it made it easier to ignore them, to focus on the living sibling in front of him instead of drifting into the greys the ghosts brought with them. 

The best distraction, by far, was the drugs. Four discovered alcohol when he was ten, and while the fuzzy way everything felt was nice, the way it made him not even care about the bloody, wailing ghosts was nicer. It didn’t make them go away, though. Just made them really easy to ignore. Drugs, though. Those were a different story. 

When Four first opened his eyes in the infirmary the day he was introduced to the wonders of morphine, he cried. Not because of the pain in his jaw or the wires in his skull, but because for the first time ever, it was quiet. There was no one in the room except him and Mom, not even the little blonde boy that had haunted the infirmary for years. Klaus, for the first time in his life, was alone.

It was easy to fall into it, after that. The high was fun, sure, but the silence was what he found really addictive. 

When Ben died, Klaus went on the biggest bender of his life. But no matter what drugs he took, or how many, Ben never disappeared like the other ghosts. Depending on the chemical cocktail, sometimes he was quiet, with his hood up, always in the background until Klaus came down; other times, it was like the drugs didn’t even touch him. He could and would stay at Klaus’s side, talking to him, insulting him, begging him. It took several months before Klaus let himself get even close to sobriety.

Then Klaus was never alone again, but he found he didn’t mind as much.

The drugs had always been the biggest _fuck you_ to Reginald Hargreeves, and the best defense Klaus had against his powers. And now they weren’t working. The ghosts were back, and Klaus hadn’t felt so helpless in the face of them since he was locked in the mausoleum at eight years old.

On top of that, Ben was being unduly nice to him. Usually, Ben only ever pulled out the gentle voice and reassuring looks when Klaus was having a nightmarishly bad trip, or had caught the eye of some dangerous, depraved individual on the street. Maybe sometimes when Klaus had panic attacks and couldn’t tell past from present, couldn’t see past the cold stone or locked door, but they didn’t talk about those times.

But since the ghosts had decided to stick around for good, Ben had been nice. It made Klaus itch. Ben had seen the writing on the wall long before Klaus, as per usual, and had been telling Klaus the drugs weren’t going to help well before Klaus himself was ready to face it. He shouldn’t be nice, he should be smug. Klaus didn’t know why Ben wasn’t being more _insufferable_ about this.

He tried to ask, once, but Ben had looked so stricken that Klaus had immediately changed topic. 

There was, however, one fail-safe way to make Ben more Angry than Nice.

“Klaus,” Ben said darkly. “Don’t you dare.”

Klaus stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry at him. 

The industrial complex they were skulking around wasn’t Klaus’s usual haunt, and for good reason. Even at his most desperate, most drug-fueled idiocy, he knew to stay away. He had had friends - as much as one can have friends with the life he lived - who had grown so wild-eyed and twitchy that they’d gone to this side of town, and Klaus hadn’t seen Racquel in three years. No one had. Not even her ghost, which was comforting until it wasn’t.

The site had a reputation among lowlifes like him, and while the police had never been able to prove anything or charge anyone, it wasn’t a mystery what went on here. Prostitution, mostly, though that was true for most of the city, and there were dealers at practically every corner. But it was different here, darker. The sex workers were young looking and timid, and it was a known fact that any drugs you bought here, you bought at your own risk. 

As a general rule, Klaus thought about this place with a large, flashing _Fuck No_ sign. But needs must and all that.

“Klaus, please,” Ben said, and that wouldn’t do. Begging Ben was only infinitesimally better than Nice Ben. “It won’t work, you know it won’t, you’re just putting yourself in danger.”

“What’s life without a little risk,” Klaus said breezily. “I like living on the wire, it makes things interesting.”

“Then take an aerial aerobics class,” Ben said, because he was a genius. “Or poke Luther awake with a stick. Just don’t do this.”

Klaus rolled his eyes, eyeing every corner, trying to ignore how tense his shoulders were. “As much as I would enjoy having my head crushed by our strongman brother, I think I’ll pass. Are you going to suggest I offer myself as target practice for Diego next? How about a living puppet for Allison to play with?”

Ben muttered something insulting about already being a puppet, but Klaus elected to ignore him in favour of approaching the short, broad-shouldered man smoking against a fire hydrant. 

Klaus had stopped being nervous approaching dealers as soon as he grew hair on his face and no longer looked like a pre-teen prep school student. As long as you had cash on you and/or a charming disposition with a gift for improvisation, it was usually a piece of cake. You wanted to buy drugs, they wanted to sell you drugs, easy.

But Donny, as he introduced himself in a grunt, was different. He was shorter than Klaus by a few inches, but where Klaus was thin and willowy, Donny was built like a tank. His neck alone looked bigger than Klaus’s head, and his shoulders were so wide Klaus hysterically wondered if he got his shirts tailor made. There was also a gun peeking out from the waist-band of his pants, though Klaus was 98% positive Donny wouldn’t need a weapon to bash his face in. Klaus could maybe recall one of their childhood lessons on incapacitating enemies quick enough to take out the guy’s eyes before Donny snapped his neck with one pinky figure. Maybe.

Ben was practically vibrating with anxiety next to him as Klaus smiled and batted his eyelashes at this angry gargoyle of a man. 

Donny had the stuff Klaus wanted. He was willing to sell, for a price. Klaus had a handful of cash. Donny didn’t want money. Ben was so incandescently angry Klaus was almost surprised he didn’t explode into a mass of ghostly tentacles.

Ben used his Nice voice as he helped Klaus stumble back the way they came.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for description of self-injury in this chapter. 
> 
> if you want to skip it, it starts after "Ben ducked out of the way, words of relief on his tongue. But it wasn’t over" and ends with "The screaming, Ben thought frantically. Somebody must have heard the screaming"

Klaus had a black eye. 

He also had a needle in the crook of his elbow and a trail of drool leading from his mouth to the sidewalk, but Ben was more focused on the black eye. It complimented the ring of fading yellow adorning his neck, as well as the hidden bruising on his ribs. It all made Ben furious and Other in a way he hadn’t felt fully since that last mission when they were seventeen, but the worst part was the feeling of helplessness.

Because Klaus had been practically a walking bruise for two weeks now, and no matter what Ben said or how hard Donny hit, he refused to get help. He said it was because the drugs made it worth it, but Ben had seen the way Klaus’s blown pupils still tracked the movement of dead faces. The way he silently cried and begged, even when he was so high he couldn’t recognize his own hands.

The only time Klaus had looked even slightly peaceful in the past two weeks was the handful of times Donny had gotten carried away enough to leave him unconscious on the pavement. So, it probably wasn’t about the drugs.

Feeling nauseous again, Ben forced himself to look away from his brother. Klaus had been out of it for a while now, but he’d been burning through the new drugs at a rate that had to terrify him as much as it terrified Ben, so that wasn’t exactly a surprise. Optimistically, Ben was looking at another hour at least before Klaus’s higher brain functions returned enough for any kind of conversation.

He could go visit Vanya again. Or maybe Diego, since it had been awhile since he’d checked in on his stabbiest brother. Actually, they were also decently close to the Academy, and while Ben hated the building perhaps even more in death than he had in life, he hadn’t seen Luther in a long, long time. It would be nice to get a dose of (somewhat) normal life.

But Klaus was completely vulnerable, sprawled across the ground in a way that practically invited a mugging, with no one friendly around for blocks. Ben wouldn’t be much help if something did happen, but the thought of Klaus trying to fight back against a street thug while weak as a kitten and alone was - not appealing. 

Ben had been by Klaus’s side for six years, and had seen his brother used as a punching bag more times than he wished to remember. Sometimes Klaus provoked it with his big mouth, sometimes his attackers just took offense at his existence, and other times they were gracious enough to throw some money in Klaus’s face afterwards. Ben could never do anything to make them stop and even trying to comfort or distract Klaus was useless half the time. But he always stayed, unless Klaus begged him not to. 

After the first week, Klaus started preemptively asking Ben to leave when he was meeting up with Donny.

So instead of taking a jaunt to visit Luther and maybe yell unheard curses at Dad, Ben settled in next to Klaus. He amused himself with watching Klaus’s lips twitch, trying to make out the words his brother was mumbling. Something about marshmallows and martinis, he thought.

Then Klaus’s breathing hitched. 

Ben was immediately on alert, having seen enough of Klaus’s overdoses to be painfully aware of the signs.

Klaus’s whole body tensed and he went stiff and still. His breathing turned ragged, but at least it hadn’t actually stopped, so Ben was taking what he could get. He could do without the sharp wheezing coming from his brother’s mouth, though. Watching Klaus’s chest to make sure it was still rising and falling, Ben almost missed when Klaus opened his eyes.

He instantly started panicking, eyes darting back and forth. His jaw must hurt, Ben thought, clenched as tightly as it was, and the low whine Klaus made when he caught sight of Ben was the sound of a wounded animal. 

“Whoa, Klaus, hey,” Ben said, shuffling closer. “It’s okay, it’s just me. I think you’re coming down, just relax.”

Klaus, contrary asshole that he was, did not relax.

The wheezing grew louder and more ragged, and Klaus never looked at Ben for longer than a second, eyes bouncing around wildly. Ben wasn’t sure what he was seeing, since there weren’t any (other) ghosts around, but whatever it was, it was _terrifying_ his brother.

Any comfort or directions Ben tried to give fell on deaf ears, as Klaus just grew more and more panicked.

It went on long enough that Ben started to feel frazzled, desperately scanning the street beyond the alley for literally anybody who might happen to look in and help. People in this city were nosy, damn it, there had to be someone around who could hear the desperate noises Klaus was making.

Just when Ben was weighing the pros and cons of reaching out to touch his brother (pro: might snap him out of whatever fit he was having; con: might freak him out more, since he hated the touch of ghosts, especially when he wasn’t expecting it), Klaus’s limbs broke themselves free of whatever had kept them locked in place. 

Klaus shot up until he was sitting, kicking his legs out and waving his arms like a windmill. Ben ducked out of the way, words of relief on his tongue. But it wasn’t over.

Klaus’s mouth fell open and he _screamed_ , hoarse and painful, loud enough to make Ben instinctively flinch back. Klaus yanked his knees to his chest, hands flying up to his head. Instead of covering his ears, though, Klaus started clawing at his face, still screaming, nails gouging lines in his cheeks, his temples, close to his eyes _oh fuck_ \- 

Ben lurched forwards, reaching out to pull Klaus’s hands away, but of course he just fell through, useless useless _useless_ -

At his (not) touch, Klaus’s screaming ratcheted higher in volume. He twisted his torso away and somehow managed to get his legs under him enough to support his weight. He took a step and tried to run, still screaming, still clawing at his own face, blood on his hands, Ben on the verge of crying behind him - but his boot, heeled and fashionable and stolen, skittered on loose gravel and he went down like a rock, slamming to the ground. His chin hit the pavement with a sickening crack, his screaming cut off. 

“Fuck, Klaus, are you - oh god, shit - ” Ben tripped over his words, hands fluttering uselessly.

Klaus’s screaming had been swapped for rough sobs, blood coating his chin and neck, eyes still bouncing, bouncing, bouncing. He wasn’t clawing at his face anymore, but his nails kept catching on his arms, his torso, the ground, as his arms flailed. Ben had no idea what the damage was, couldn’t see through the blood and his own blurry vision, but he could hear the soft keening Klaus made through the sobs.

The screaming, Ben thought frantically. Somebody must have heard the screaming, everyone in the city must have heard the god awful screaming.

“Someone’s coming,” he told Klaus, voice shaky and not his own. “Someone will come, Klaus, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay. Just - hang on, okay, someone will come.” 

Klaus stopped sobbing, stopped that awful whimpering, and finally, finally, his eyes fixed on Ben and stayed there. They looked dazed and unfocused, and Ben had no idea if Klaus was actually seeing him, but he tried to smile, tried to look reassuring anyway. 

“Someone will come,” he repeated. “Someone will come.”

There was no sign that Klaus heard him, but his eyes stayed open, and he didn’t start screaming again. So Ben said “Someone will come,” again and kept saying it, over and over, until someone did.

When the ambulance came, Ben stayed at Klaus’s side, unmoving, even when the paramedic had to pass through him. He didn’t look away from Klaus’s face, just watched the way his breath fogged the oxygen mask. 

Neither of them could feel it, but he kept his hand over Klaus’s. 


	5. Chapter 5

When Klaus woke up, everything hurt.

He was disorientated for a long minute, squinting into the darkened room around him (thank god there were various lights around the room, as well as light spilling in from the hall beyond the door). It probably wasn’t a good sign how long it took for him to recognize where he was, but his brain felt a bit like jelly, so he was willing to cut himself some slack.

God, he hated hospitals. He groaned - or tried to. His throat was decidedly not happy to comply, flaring with enough pain to make his eyes water, and the severe ache in his jaw made him wonder for a horrifying moment if it had been wired shut again. 

He found Ben hunched in a chair next to the bed.

Klaus, having learned his lesson, didn’t try to speak, but turned his face in his brother’s direction.

Ben’s eyes were dark behind his hood, examining him closely. Klaus tried not to quell under the scrutiny. After a long, nerve-wrackingly quiet moment, Ben sighed and looked away.

“Do you remember what happened?” he asked.

And the thing was, Klaus would have loved to say no. But even without the stinging pain in his shoulders, arms, and - fuck, his face - he was pretty sure he’d remember the faces that had driven him to it. The gut-wrenching horror that had gripped him, the fear that had replaced the blood in his veins with fire. The voices that had yelled so loud he had thought for sure his eardrums would burst.

Slowly, he nodded.

“The drugs,” Ben continued, staring at the wall with an intensity that almost made Klaus glad he wasn’t looking at  _ him _ like that. Almost. “Doctors said they must have been cut with something nasty.”

Klaus had figured that. Had figured it as soon as the blissful high had turned into something sour on his tongue, even before  _ they  _ had showed up.

Fuck Donny and his tainted shit, man.

“You could have  _ died,  _ Klaus.” Ben said. Then he did turn to look at Klaus, face stony, hands clenched into fists in his lap. “You coded in the ambulance, and I thought - it didn’t look like you were going to come back this time. And you  _ promised _ , but you weren’t - ” He stopped himself, a funny look on his face.

Klaus would have said something about ghosts being constipated, but his brother looked like he was going to cry, and he wasn’t always a complete asshole.

Because he got it. He understood. He’d had several close calls in the past, times where his heart had stopped and the medics had to forcibly start it again. It was an unfortunate side effect of his lifestyle. Klaus had long ago grown indifferent to his own mortality, had basically written himself off as Mostly Dead since before he could tie his own shoes - but Ben hadn’t. Ben was always the most shaken out of the two of them by the close calls, and after the third time it had happened, he’d made Klaus promise him something.

Ben wasn’t really sure how he’d ended up as a ghost, wasn’t sure if there had ever been another option. Neither of them really knew if there was Something Else for the dead, if those who didn’t become ghosts went Somewhere. They didn’t know if ghosts could eventually Go There too. 

So, when Klaus woke up after his third close call, Ben had made him promise not to Go. If he died, when he died, Klaus promised to Stay, with Ben. They would be ghosts together, until they figured out if there was Anywhere Else for them to go. 

Klaus figured watching him die in the ambulance and not immediately appear with him as a ghost had understandably shaken Ben. Oops.

“I promise,” Klaus said, but his mouth didn’t cooperate. His throat was on fire and his jaw was stiff and hurt like a bitch, but he needed Ben to hear it, so he tried again. “I promise, Ben. I promise.”

His brother didn’t say anything for a while, but he didn’t end up crying, either, so. Result.

“What did you see?” Ben asked eventually. “When - In the alley, you saw something, but there weren’t any ghosts.”

Klaus couldn’t have answered even if he wanted to, because his tongue felt like it had turned to stone. He tried to remember to breathe, but the fucking  _ rock in his mouth _ made it difficult, and he spent a moment focusing on not choking to death. 

Unbidden, the faces from the alley flashed in his mind’s eye again, and Klaus thought for sure his heart would jump right out of his chest. He could still hear them, too, had never stopped hearing them, might continue to hear them forever and ever until - 

Ben was talking to him. His voice was low, the jarring cadence that only Nice Ben ever used. Klaus latched onto the sound, using it to drown out the other voices he could still hear chipping away at him. He didn’t like Nice Ben, was uncomfortable as the recipient of kind words and gentle tones, knowing he didn’t deserve it, but this was - good. So unlike  _ their _ voices that he managed to breathe past the rock in his mouth and lean back against the pillows again.

“It was them,” he said, voice broken and raw. Ben abruptly stopped speaking to listen. “All of them. Diego and Allison and Luther, Vanya… Five. They were all there. Dead. They were so angry. They weren’t like you, Benny, all civilized and... and whole. They were - pieces. They were so  _ loud _ . They kept saying - ” Klaus found he couldn’t repeat it, so he didn’t try. “So loud,” he said instead, quietly, a confession.

Ben put his hand next to Klaus’s on the bed, not quite close enough to touch. It wasn’t enough, could never replace his brother actually holding his hand - and god, Klaus missed that so fucking much - but it was surprisingly comforting. Klaus found he had to blink back tears because _ow_ , salt and open wounds.

“They’re okay,” Ben said gently. Klaus thought he could maybe learn to tolerate Nice Ben more. “Our siblings. They’re not - you know. I saw Vanya yesterday, and we would have heard if Allison or Diego... I promise they’re okay. I can check on Luther later, too, if you want. On all of them. Er, it might take me awhile to find Allison, so maybe we can just check the news or whatever, at least until you get out of here.”

He didn’t say anything about Five, and Klaus was grateful. Talk about salt and open wounds.

“Did the docs say when I could be sprung out of here?” he asked, then decided talking was probably off the agenda for the rest of the night. His jaw was throbbing in time with his heart, and while he was pretty certain it wasn’t wired shut, there was definitely something broken. 

Maybe Ben would tell him about his injuries later. Or, well, the doctors would, right? Wasn’t that what they were supposed to do, inform their patients of their conditions? Usually, Klaus tried not to stay long enough to get to that point, but he was guessing his injuries this time maybe warranted a slightly longer stay, and he doubted Ben would help him leave early anyway. He seemed pretty shaken up about the whole thing, which was fair, since Klaus was pretty fucking shaken up himself.

In fact, Ben was already shaking his head. “Klaus, you can’t just leave,” he said. “You’re - hurt pretty bad, and the doctors know you… did it to yourself.” He paused, looking sick and sad and so far from Angry Ben that Klaus had to look away. “They’re going to want to watch you for awhile.”

But here’s the thing: Klaus hated hospitals. Being confined to a bed, in a small room, was a big no-no for him, and the forced detox was a buzzkill, but the biggest problem was, surprise, the ghosts. The amount of dead wandering the halls of a big hospital wasn’t exactly helpful for Klaus’s mental health. 

The only thing - other than the pain, did Klaus mention already that  _ everything hurt  _ \- that kept him from trying to scramble out of bed right away, was the fact that Ben knew all about Klaus’s issues with hospitals. He knew it so well that he often helped Klaus  _ escape  _ the hospital.

Probably seeing the panic on his face, Ben was quick to raise his hands, palms out. There were no tattoos there, which Klaus had said before was a shame. 

“Maybe,” Ben said slowly. “They would release you sooner if… there was someone who could watch you? To make sure you weren’t going to go off the deep end and hurt yourself.”  _ Again _ , he didn’t say. 

Klaus thought that was pretty stupid, since Ben was with him literally all of the time. He tried to say so without actually speaking, because he could still hear Mom’s voice in his ear telling him how life was going to work with wires holding his mouth closed.

Ben huffed in familiar exasperation, and the world shifted slightly closer to normal. “Someone who isn’t a ghost, idiot.” He hesitated. Klaus was suspicious. “You should get them to call someone. Diego, maybe, or Vanya.”

Doubtlessly seeing Klaus’s mutinous expression, Ben was quick to continue, putting his hand next to Klaus’s again. Damn, that was playing dirty.

“Klaus, the drugs aren’t working. You can’t keep taking more and more, hoping it’ll work, because it won’t! You gotta face it, Klaus. I’m sorry, okay, I am, but - I can’t watch you do this again. You were - screaming, and hurting yourself, and I couldn’t  _ do  _ anything. Don’t make me watch that again, please.” Ben leaned forward, eyes big and open and pleading. “You know it’s not working,” he said softly.

Klaus did know. But he didn’t know how to live with that, didn’t know how to accept that his one coping mechanism that he’d had since before puberty was gone. His future stretched out before him, full of ghosts and screaming and with no way out.

He was scared.

“Loud,” he said, and he felt the wounds on his face sting as he started to cry. “It’s so loud.”

“I know,” Ben said, and he did look completely, painfully sorry. 

Klaus hid the shaking of his hands by twisting them in the blankets. He squeezed his eyes shut and focused on breathing past that rock again. “Okay,” he said eventually. “Okay.”

Hours later, when the nurse came in to test for a concussion and check his bandages, Klaus asked her to phone Diego.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry there's little actual comfort in this fic :( but i am like 80% done a sequel where there is. a little more comfort. a smidgen. but also none of the hargreeves have a single braincell between them so results may vary


End file.
